The present invention relates to e-mail messaging systems and, more specifically, to enhanced e-mail messaging systems that enable the generation and transmission of e-mail messages including rich media from standard multi-user e-mail messaging systems.
As the Internet has grown in popularity, businesses, consumers and private groups have adopted the Internet as an efficient, cost-effective, dynamic medium for delivering many types of content in a variety of formats. Web browsing is a commonly used aspect of the Internet that has grown in popularity due, in part, to the capability of presenting rich, multimedia content to interested parties. As is commonly known in the art, rich media is any combination of images, video, audio, formatting, animation, HTML, programmatic scripting and other functionality that can be delivered through a Web browser application. Rich media content can include, but is not limited to, graphics, audio, video, live data feeds from remote sites, interactive forms, purchasing mechanisms and other forms of content expression. As the variety of rich media content available to Web designers increases, companies, organizations and individuals have been quick to adopt Web interaction as a common form of communication.
Web browsing has a disadvantage in the communications realm in that the activity is passive and must await initiation of contact by a visitor. By contrast, e-mail aspects of the Internet provide for an active communications medium by which e-mail senders may initiate direct contact with e-mail recipients. By analogy, letters sent by traditional mail transmit information directly, person-to-person, business-to-business and company-to-consumer in contrast to passive media forms such as print, television and radio that await viewing by potential audience members.
E-mail is currently the most efficient communication medium available, and among the most revolutionary technological developments of the century. Its ubiquitous presence and rapid growth are largely attributable, like the Internet itself, to uniform technical standards. A major deficiency of e-mail when compared with Web content publishing, however, is that the most commonly used e-mail systems, i.e., multi-user e-mail messaging systems, have limited abilities to support the generation and transmission of e-mail messages that deliver rich media content into the viewing page of an e-mail message, that is, an enhanced or “rich media” e-mail message.
Electronic mail was originally developed to deliver text correspondence from one user to another on a computer network where a user is a member of an e-mail messaging system and may be a person, a machine or an application having an e-mail address within the domain of the e-mail messaging system. Its core technology is a server application designed to support activities such as the addressing of messages, transmission of messages to specified destination addresses, reception of messages from other servers, and storage of messages for viewing. A server is understood to be either a computer application designed to fulfill client requests or a piece of computer hardware configured to support such an application. The primary technology for e-mail is the TCP/IP communication protocol known as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). SMTP is the fundamental technology used in mail transport agents (MTAs), which are applications that send, receive and route e-mail messages on mail servers. While e-mail was originally designed to support the delivery of text messages, subsequent development produced potential support for rich media e-mail messaging through the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) standard, which allows transmission of messages in several parts, including a part containing HTML, the current coding language for rich media content on the Internet at the present time.
The state of the art for generating and sending rich media e-mail is limited to applications and features of applications that allow users to compose rich media e-mail messages, or add rich media elements to e-mail messages, prior to initiating SMTP communication with a mail server (a “send” or “origination” event). This limitation currently restricts the incorporation of rich media into an e-mail message to the originating sender of the e-mail message. At present, there is no available method for centralized creation, administration and incorporation of rich media in messages sent from standard multi-user e-mail messaging systems.
Turning to the drawings, wherein like components are designated by like reference numerals throughout the various figures, attention is initially directed to FIG. 1. FIG. 1 illustrates a prior art multi-user e-mail messaging system 10 as commonly used today. In general, the multi-user e-mail messaging system is designed to continuously process inbound and outbound e-mail messages for multiple users distributed on a single network. System 10 includes a user PC 12, which supports an e-mail client 14, and a standard mail server 16 interfaced to the Internet 18. E-mail client 14 is configured to generate a rich media e-mail 20 and to transmit rich media e-mail 20 by an outbound path (indicated by arrows 22, 24, 26 and 28) via standard mail server 16 and Internet 18 to an intended recipient (not shown). Mail server 16 hosts user accounts, administration tools, a mail transport agent (MTA) and security features and communicates with e-mail client applications that allow users to send, receive and manage e-mail messages from their local computers. Inbound e-mail 30, arriving through an inbound path (indicated by arrows 32, 34, 36 and 38) via Internet 18, is also routed through mail server 16 and e-mail client 14 to be received at user PC 12. As shown in FIG. 1, in a standard multi-user e-mail messaging system, e-mail messages are composed and sent from e-mail clients that direct messages to a central mail server that sends messages to end-recipient domains through an open connection to the Internet. Subsequent progress has extended the capabilities of multi-user messaging systems to include diverse functions such as tools for organization and workgroup collaboration, enhanced security features and sophisticated user tools for e-mail clients.
Continuing to refer to FIG. 1, current solutions for sending rich media e-mail from standard multi-user e-mail messaging systems are designed for e-mail client applications, i.e., for sender-specified incorporation of rich media content into e-mail messages where specification is made prior to an original send event. E-mail client 14 is an example of a client application which is a PC-based e-mail application.
An example of a widely used, PC-based e-mail client application in operation today is Microsoft Outlook™, which includes features that enable senders to include rich media content and formats in messages as they compose them. One such feature, commonly known as “Stationery”, is primarily designed to allow users to select backgrounds and fonts for their messages, but can also be used to incorporate other rich media content into them. Using the Stationery or standard features such as Insert/Picture or Insert/File, rich media elements can be inserted directly into messages by the user originating the e-mail message. However, the large file size of most rich media elements poses numerous potential problems for networks and user systems arising from the weight of e-mail messages containing such rich media elements, and such origination of rich media e-mail messages by individual users is generally discouraged and/or disabled by technical administrators of e-mail messaging systems.
A number of PC-based e-mail client add-on applications are available from third party software vendors to allow users to add rich media content to e-mail messages prior to sending them.
One solution, Lettermark™ produced by FullSeven, attempts to solve some of the problems associated with delivering centrally administrated rich media content in e-mail using Outlook Stationery. An application installed on a user's PC bridges communication between a central administration server and a user's Outlook application to deliver standardized rich media templates in user's e-mail messages. For purposes of the present application, rich media templates are defined as individual sets of predefined software code containing formatting instructions and other specifications for rich media content that will deliver rich media content into the body of an e-mail message when the message is viewed by a recipient.
The solution presents a number of difficulties for users, design constraints based on the limitations of elements that can be incorporated in the composition pane, and myriad complications limiting effective activity tracking.
Another solution, produced by MetaMail™, uses a PC-based publishing application to create an XML message attachment, incorporating a sender's text message, which is presented to recipients of a standard e-mail message. The solution requires recipients to have installed a proprietary PC plug in “reader” application to view the rich media message.
Yet another solution, Logorilla 2.0 Pro™ by Logorilla™, uses a PC application to send e-mail messages directly from an individual user's PC to a customized mail server, bypassing the standard mail server, where the user's uploaded logo image and pre-defined header text are appended to the top of the text portion of the user's e-mail messages.
Still another solution, offered by a now-defunct company known as Epidemic Marketing™ used a PC application that inserted HTML code into e-mail messages that enabled them to display rich media advertisements in the right-hand margin of e-mail messages.
Another solution, offered by the now-defunct companies Supersig™ and Favemail™ used a PC application that installed a script to automate the insertion of certain types of rich media content into the signature portion of the body of an e-mail message.
These PC-based e-mail client add-on solutions share several important deficiencies. For example, content elements displayed during the composition process add significant bandwidth burden to local networks; content elements inserted prior to an original send event clog sender networks, recipient networks and recipient in-boxes. Also, the operation of many of these applications introduces security risks to otherwise highly-protected e-mail systems. Furthermore, significant changes to users' customary operation of their e-mail applications results in poor adoption rates, inconsistent use and high rates of error; implementation across a user base is prohibitively resource intensive across all but the smallest user networks, and support for user-intensive methods is difficult and costly. In addition, updates to content elements and upgrades of application features are difficult, expensive and inconsistent, and the integrity of rich media content design across a user base cannot be ensured. Moreover, secure, private tracking of send traffic and other activity is nearly impossible.
In one prior art method, which is enabled in current versions of Microsoft Outlook e-mail client application, a user creates an HTML page to insert into an e-mail message as the message is composed. This method solves the problem of inserting large rich media files directly into the message by using computer code that “calls” rich media elements into the message from a publicly accessible location on the Internet only when the message is viewed by a recipient. That is, rich media elements do not travel through the network and user systems with the e-mail message itself but are called into the e-mail message upon viewing by a message recipient. HTML can be inserted into the e-mail message, for example, as a stored selection in the Outlook Stationery file or by using the Insert/File/Insert As Text selection in the e-mail composition window. This HTML method requires expertise well beyond that of most general users of e-mail and is fraught with pitfalls arising from the differential treatment of rich media content by various recipient e-mail platforms. Any effort to centrally create rich media content for delivery through e-mail using the features of Microsoft Outlook requires distribution and continuous updating of HTML templates across the PCs of users of the system, along with changes in users' practices to accommodate the incorporation of text messages in HTML template frames. Furthermore, comprehensive measurement and monitoring of the system is prohibitively resource intensive. Consequently, effective use of Outlook tools for this purpose across an e-mail system user base is very difficult.
Due at least in part to the above listed factors, the use of Microsoft Outlook or any current PC-based e-mail client to generate rich media e-mail for any purpose is rare, and the widespread use of any current PC-based e-mail client application to centrally administer rich media content for e-mail generated by users of a standard e-mail messaging system is not foreseen.
Turning now to FIG. 2, in conjunction with FIG. 1, an example of an e-mail messaging system 100 including Web-based e-mail applications as an alternative to PC-based e-mail client applications is illustrated. Like system 10 shown in FIG. 1, system 100 includes a user PC 112, which in this case supports a Web-based e-mail client 114. E-mail client 114 is configured to generate a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) post 115 (including no rich media content) by an outbound path (indicated by arrows 117 and 119) to a Web mail application 121, which is located remotely from user PC 112. Web mail application 121 hosts a processing application 123 which generates a rich media e-mail 127. Web mail application 121 further includes a standard mail server 116 which directs rich media e-mail via Internet 18 to the intended recipient (not shown).
A small number of companies offer Web-based e-mail applications with specialized rich media e-mail capabilities. The Web-based e-mail client on such e-mail systems enables the use of selected rich media (e.g., HTML graphic ads) in the generation, transmission and display of e-mail messages. For example, service providers can permit individual users to include some type of rich media content when a user is logged into a personal account on the service provider's proprietary system.
A first example of such an application, Appmail™ by Zaplet™, enables users to select one of a number of interactive collaboration tools for delivery to recipients via e-mail from a web-based e-mail sending MTA, which cannot receive inbound messages. These collaboration tools are served from a central source, and information entered into them by e-mail recipients is updated each time a recipient message is opened.
A second example of such an application is Messenger™ by MindArrow™. This application enables users to select one of a number of rich media e-mail templates, compose a text message and send the resulting rich media e-mail to recipients from the web-based system, which cannot receive inbound messages.
A third example of the web-based application for rich media e-mail, formerly offered by Kefta as Keftamail™ and now available open source as kmail, offers users the ability to include advertisements or pictures in the body of e-mail messages they send from ordinary Web mail user accounts.
In the first two cases, the web-based client is used in conjunction with a sending MTA, rather than a full multi-user e-mail messaging server. In all three cases, the systems are proprietary, stand-alone systems that do not provide the full set of desirable features of standard multi-user e-mail messaging systems and are not designed to allow user interaction to extend their features to those systems.
Turning now to FIG. 3, a bulk e-mail messaging system 200 for generation and delivery of rich media e-mail messages is illustrated. System 200 includes a user administrator PC 212, which supports a highly specialized, administrative application 214. Administrative application 214 generates an HTTP post or API call 215, which is directed through an outbound path (indicated by arrows 217 and 219) to a bulk mail application 221. Bulk mail application 221 includes a bulk mail server 222 as well as a processing application 223, which generates a rich media e-mail 227. Rich media e-mail 227 is directed through bulk mail server 222 via Internet 18 to the intended recipient (not shown).
The most common solutions for generating rich media e-mail have been designed for “bulk e-mail messaging systems”, which include high volume outbound delivery MTAs and accompanying user tools designed to allow specialized, administrative users to create e-mail messages for delivery to a large population of recipients. Such systems are designed to support intermittent transmission of “one-to-many” e-mail messages and do not process inbound messages for users. These systems also generally include substantial features for compiling and maintaining lists of e-mail recipients and their characteristics and capabilities for assigning the delivery of particular messages to sets of recipients based on specified characteristics (i.e., “targeting”). Some systems also include capabilities for generating messages by dynamically combining content elements based on recipient characteristics (for example, such a function can be incorporated into processing application 223).
Many of today's leading bulk e-mail messaging systems support the creation and delivery of rich media e-mail and include administrative tools that allow users to import and store HTML code and rich media content elements that will together create a rich media e-mail message, to assign content elements to messages based on recipient characteristics, to centrally store and remotely serve content elements into e-mail pages when messages are viewed (in the same way that web pages deliver content elements when they are viewed) and to track activity by logging the activation of content elements as they are viewed, clicked on, or engaged in other types of interaction with e-mail recipients. Examples of bulk e-mail messaging systems that deliver rich media e-mail include DARTmail™ produced by DoubleClick, Unitymail™ produced by MessageMedia, and Interact™ produced by Responsys.
A critical aspect of the generation of rich media e-mail in the environment of a bulk e-mail messaging system is the unity of the transmission of the message with the creation or insertion of rich media content. While pre-designed content elements may be stored and re-purposed, the rich media content and any text elements of a message generally are parts of a single embodiment, a message designed for broadcast to an audience, generated or administered by a sender responsible for the assignment of content and transmission of the message. That is, flexibility of message content is difficult in such bulk e-mail messaging systems and, like the PC-based client e-mail applications described earlier, centralized administration of the rich media content across messages generated by a wide user base is problematic. Furthermore, bulk e-mail messaging systems are stand-alone applications that do not support standard activities required for multi-user correspondence messaging. Additionally, the rich media capabilities of these bulk e-mail messaging systems cannot be applied to e-mail operations that fulfill the purposes of standard e-mail messaging systems.
The present invention provides an enhanced e-mail messaging system for rich media delivery which serves to reduce or eliminate the foregoing problems in a highly advantageous and heretofore unseen way and which provides still further advantages.